News and Media

CNBC: Jamie Dimon Says a Hard Brexit Would be a ‘Disaster’ for the UKJ.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday that it would be in the United Kingdom’s best interest to avoid a hard exit from the European Union. “I think a hard Brexit will be a disaster for Great Britain,” Dimon said at the Economic Club of New York. “We don’t think it will happen because it’s bad for Europe too.” A hard Brexit refers to the U.K. leaving the EU without access to the bloc’s single market and customs union.

The record-long US government shutdown could drive economic growth down to zero in the current quarter, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive said on Tuesday, as big companies amplify their warnings over the mounting damage from the stand-off. US companies are becoming increasingly worried about the entrenched funding dispute at the heart of Washington as the tussle over Donald Trump’s proposed border wall keeps a quarter of the federal government closed.

Wall Street’s longest-serving bank CEO on Wednesday said he thinks the consumer and the economy are in good shape and that the U.S.’s relationship with China remains a vital one.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York at midday, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM, +0.03% said the relationship with China is “going to be the most important” over the course of “the next 100 years.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged more than 600 points Wednesday, erasing its November tumble, after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell eased investor worries about an aggressive increase in interest rates.

In remarks Wednesday before the Economic Club of New York, Mr. Powell said interest rates are “just below” broad estimates of a neutral level—a setting designed to neither speed nor slow economic growth.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell comments on the path of monetary policy during a speech at the Economic Club of New York. (video)

Reuters: Fed's Powell, in apparent dovish shift, says rates near neutralU.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell injected investors with a strong dose of optimism on Wednesday, saying that the central bank’s policy rate is now “just below” estimates of a level that neither brakes nor boosts a healthy U.S. economy, comments that many investors read as signaling the Fed’s three-year tightening cycle is drawing to a close.

“We know that things often turn out to be quite different from even the most careful forecasts,” Powell said at an Economic Club of New York luncheon on Wednesday. “Our gradual pace of raising interest rates has been an exercise in balancing risks.”

The Fed chairman brought smiles to trading floors yesterday with a speech at the Economic Club of New York.

He needed only two words. Mr. Powell said that the Fed’s benchmark interest rate was “just below” the neutral level. Investors took that to mean that the central bank would stop raising rates soon.

That sparked a market rally. Stocks soared 2.3 percent, erasing the losses from a rocky November. (Investors may have also noticed that the bond market has signaled that the case for interest rate rises is weakening.)

If you decide to assemble your N.B.A. hate-tweets into a real-life email to Commissioner Adam Silver, do not be surprised if he writes you back.

Speaking to a gathering of the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday, Silver said that he tries to engage directly with fans angry about his decisions. “Whether people said it online or wrote me letters directly saying ‘I will never be a fan of your game again because you have made that decision,’ my reaction was to try and engage with them,” Silver said.

“People are often surprised to hear back from me. I think the mistake would be in this day and age to say, ‘I know I am right.’ ”

Silver spoke to MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle at the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday about his expectation that the NBA will have a woman head coach soon. According to Kevin Draper of the New York Times, Silver hopes that the NBA will become the first major professional men's sports league in the United States to employ a female head coach.

"We are very focused on a woman being a head coach in our league," Silver said, per the New York Times. "I am very confident it is going to happen at some point."

Crude oil's sudden meltdown could be nothing to worry about. Or it could be a sign that the world economy is sick.The abrupt bear market in oil prices may have been sparked by a sharp drop-off in demand for energy, which powers the economy.

Investors were similarly spooked by oil's last major selloff, in late 2015 and early 2016. That dive to $26 a barrel led some to fear an imminent recession. That proved to be a false alarm.

"There are shades of this that remind me of the latter part of 2015," Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said on Wednesday."The question today is: Is oil again pretending to be that canary in the coal mine around slower global growth?" Corbat said while speaking at the Economic Club of New York. "Because if you look at supply-demand figures, nothing at all has materially changed in the last week or two."

Speaking at an event in New York, Corbat said that U.S. companies are mostly in good financial shape, thanks in large part to the corporate tax cuts, which left them flush with cash and in a better position to pay off debt. Still, hedge funds and other nonbank firms have recently increased lending to risky companies — and they could be hurt by problem loans if the economy takes a turn for the worse.

The days of swiping plastic are rapidly coming to an end. That’s according to Margaret Keane, president and CEO of Synchrony Financial, the industry's largest issuer of store cards, who said during a public appearance Tuesday that she expects credit cards to go by the wayside as soon as five years from now. Asked whether she thought plastic cards would meet their demise within the next decade, Keane said she expects the transition to occur much faster than that. “It’s going to happen soon.

Federal Reserve Governor Randal Quarles said he favors gradual interest-rate increases and voiced optimism that the U.S. economy might be able to grow faster without overheating -- potentially meriting a slower hiking path ahead.

In remarks Thursday to the Economic Club of New York, he suggested that a tick up in the economy’s potential growth rate, if realized, could warrant a slower pace of rate hikes than would otherwise be appropriate.

GeekWire: Should Google be regulated? Expedia’s Barry Diller says yes, to stop competition with advertisers Add one more voice to calls for regulation of Google: Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of Expedia Group.Diller, interviewed by CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin during an event at the Economic Club of New York, was asked how he felt about the large technology companies. Diller, who holds the titles of chairman and senior executive for both Expedia and IAC, immediately responded that Facebook and Google “own, basically, advertising business worldwide.”

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan said Tuesday he supports the U.S. central bank pressing forward "gradually and patiently" with interest-rate increases.

Mr. Kaplan was speaking at a gathering of the Economic Club of New York. He isn't currently a voting member of the interest-rate setting Federal Open Market Committee. That body met in late September and raised rates for a third time this year, lifting the central bank's short-term interest-rate target rate range to between 2% and 2.25%.

The recent jump in U.S. bond yields suggests “conflicting factors,” including a proposed new North America trade agreement, is clouding overall uncertainty among investors over future economic growth prospects, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan said on Tuesday.

U.S. Treasuries have been sold off recently as strong data fueled fears about rising inflation and a potentially faster pace of rate increases by the Fed. “I’m always careful not to over-read or over-attribute certain factors,” Kaplan added after addressing the Economic Club of New York.

The bond market is sending a pessimistic signal about the longer-term prospects of the U.S. economy, Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan said Tuesday. All eyes on Wall Street have been tuned into the rapid acceleration of the 10-year Treasury yield in recent weeks as a sign that inflation is looming.

However, Kaplan told the Economic Club of New York that there's another important message coming, namely that the flattening of the so-called yield curve that has been taking place over the past several months is an indicator that the market sees growth slowing.

During an hour-long, wide-ranging interview with the Economic Club of New York, Frazier, the CEO of New Jersey-based pharma giant Merck, addressed the issue of rising prescription drug costs and how it's impacting patients.

The United States is ready to negotiate a trade deal with China whenever Beijing is prepared for serious talks that will reduce tariffs and eliminate non-tariff trade barriers, top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday. Kudlow, speaking at the Economic Club of New York, also said China’s economic reforms were moving in the wrong direction and that he expected the United States would soon announce tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

When the Congressional Budget Office in April estimated the drastic effect the tax overhaul would have on the deficit, Corker said at a Senate Budget Committee that if “it ends up costing what has been laid out here, it could well be one of the worst votes I’ve made.” Whoops!

But others have chosen to key in on the “wasteful spending” part of Mnuchin’s statement about the inflated deficit as a way of justifying tax reform. Last month, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said that while “people are quick to blame deficits on tax cuts,” he’s not worried. “If you grow rapidly you’re going to have lesser deficits. Growth solves a lot of problems,” he said during a speech at the Economic Club of New York. “The gap is principally spending too much.”

A top economic adviser to President Trump said Monday the U.S. is ready to engage in serious trade talks with China, in comments that also shrugged off massive U.S. government budget deficits as largely a function of too much government spending and not tax cuts. “The trade system around the world has been broken” and “China is the biggest culprit” for the current troubles, Lawrence Kudlow, head of the White House National Economic Council, told a gathering of the Economic Club of New York.

A top economic adviser to President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects U.S. budget deficits of about 4 percent to 5 percent of the country's economic output for the next one to two years, adding that there would likely be an effort in 2019 to cut spending on entitlement programs. "We have to be tougher on spending," White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in remarks to the Economic Club of New York, adding that government spending was the reason for the wider budget deficits, not the Republican-led tax cuts activated this year. Kudlow did not specify where future cuts would be made.

Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., sits down with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait to discuss U.S. trade policy, the state of credit markets and his views on cryptocurrencies. They speak at the Economic Club of New York. (Source: Bloomberg)

Western Union Co. won’t add a cyrptocurrency transfer solution to its arsenal soon, said CEO Hikmet Ersek. Speaking at the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday morning, the head of the money-transfer giant explained that customers firmly favor fiat currency over upstart digital counterparts due to the broad usability of cold, hard assets like cash.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday said he felt positive about talks to update the NAFTA trade pact, which U.S. officials say need to be wrapped up very quickly for the current Congress to vote on a final text.

Reuters UK: Risks Growing That Could Alter ECB's Tightening Plan - Villeroy The European Central Bank would have to alter its march toward a more normal policy stance if growing risks from protectionism, exchange rates or market swings end up depressing inflation, ECB policymaker Francois Villeroy de Galhau said on Wednesday.

On the sidelines of the historic visit to the United States by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the Economic Club of New York organized a panel discussion on new economic opportunities in the Kingdom.

Billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel believes the high cost of living is stifling entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. “One thing I’ve been thinking about as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley is the vast majority of the capital I give to the companies is just going to landlords. It’s going to commercial real estate and even more to urban slumlords of one sort or another. And that’s an odd thing to be doing as a venture capitalist. That’s so disproportionate,” Thiel said at an event on Thursday hosted by the Economic Club of New York.

Despite the hype, PayPal Holdings Inc. isn’t buying into crypto for now. Speaking at the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan, PayPal Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman said cryptocurrencies have a very uncertain future. “Regulations need to be sorted out and a whole number of other things,” he said. “It’s an experiment right now that is very unclear which direction it will go.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at a company conference in 2014.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on Wednesday that technology companies need to accept that their design choices help create both the good and bad of artificial intelligence technology. "I feel like sometimes we in tech, even, abdicate control: '[AI] is going to happen tomorrow and our best case is that we're going to be domesticated cats or whatever.' But no, it's a choice. I'm not making fun of that as a consequence. It could happen, but only if we abdicate," Nadella said.